Lesser Works
by DanteBeatrice77
Summary: A collection of all the one-shots that have amassed over the past few months around various places on the internet. Always rizzles.
1. The Claw

A/N: I'm depositing all of my one shots here in one place. Think of my other stories as albums, and this as my mixtape. Something fun without the burden of a continuing plot.

This one was inspired by an anonymous tumblr prompt. Hope you all enjoy!

* * *

"What do you mean you've never done this before?!" Jane shouted over the pop music blaring through the arcade. This wing of the bowling alley, along with all its other parts, had no lights but the sporadic neon strobes pulsating against the floor and walls. She sipped on the cocktail Maura had made her order, just so the other woman wouldn't be drinking alone, and winced when she got only the taste of sugary syrup.

Cosmic bowling had been Frankie's idea, a way to wind down after a particularly stressful work week, but Maura had been the one to latch onto the plan with the most fervor. Which perplexed the detective, because her friend had led her away from all that bowling and toward the crappy arcade with cheap plastic prizes and 1990s shooting games. A few teenagers loitered around the place, assumedly still in an awkward too-cool-for-bowling stage of life, a phase Jane would readily admit that she went through.

Maura, apparently, had gone through none of this, though. "Jane, while you were galavanting around Boston's arcades, winning prizes from claw machines nigh and far, I was nowhere near the states," the doctor said with a chuckle that rattled in Jane's chest, they were so close. "So please, humor me." The smell of stale popcorn and spilled soda that had long dried did little to mask the chanel perfume wafting its way through the brunette's nostrils and into her lubricated capillaries.

"Well, we're here now, right? Pop a quarter in and take a crack, Dr. Isles," Jane cleared her throat, and moved so that Maura could face the machine herself. "See if you can beat my old record of three stuffed animals in a row." She looked to their reflection in the glass, the stark white of the fluorescent inside painting them in full contrast against the dark backdrop of the room. She admitted in the furthest depths of herself that she liked the view of herself behind Maura, close enough to smell the shampoo that lingered in her hair.

"You're not going to show me first? No trial run from the Master?" Maura asked with a curled eyebrow, looking not behind her to Jane, but at the taller woman's reflection.

"Nah, this is more of a feel it type of thing, Maura. You just gotta go for it," Jane replied, shaking her head and letting a laugh crinkle her face. The top 40 playlist buzzed in her ear and the smoky makeup on Maura's face caused her to chug the rest of her drink, hoping what little vodka was in it would numb her nerves a little. She nodded her head towards the clunky machine full of stuffed teddy bears and gave its side a tap for good measure.

"Ok then, let's do it!" the medical examiner yipped with a clap of her hands. she reached into her clutch for a quarter, put it in, and then grasped the joystick - Jane's chest ballooned on the inhale with affection. Maura's look of concentration, a look she had seen countless times in the throes of case or during a challenge in the autopsy suite, was too adorable NOT to swoon at.

The doctor maneuvered the claw with surgical precision. She inched it towards her target, a blue bear with the Red Sox logo emblazoned on his chest, and lurched back when she felt she needed more composure, more control. Finally, after what seemed like minutes, she grasped it, and inched it again, this time toward the prize door. Home free in 3… 2…. 1…. "Dammit!" she cursed when the bear fell just short of its destination.

"It's ok, Maur. No one does it on their first try," Jane offered, still too amused to push any heart behind her encouragement. Maura even scowled at her giggle. "What? Go ahead, do it again."

Maura did. Seven times. Almost an hour had passed, and Nina had sent her several _where are you kids?_ texts. The woman needed no encouragement to assume about the relationship between the two of them, and yet here they were, serving it to her on a silver platter. "It's so infuriating, but I can't stop!"

"Is it cause you've never failed at anything before?" Jane snarked. Maura bit her lip to hide a smirk and elbowed the woman still close behind her in the ribs. "Ow!"

"Teach me, Jane," Maura whined, turning to face her friend, who rolled her eyes. The doctor placed her drink on the game, and rubbed her hands over Jane's leather jacket, from shoulder to chest and back again.

"Didn't I say this was a learn on your own game?" Jane asked, a coy smile hiding some of the perspiration that gathered at her temples.

"Well yes, but clearly that's not working for me," the shorter woman laughed again, and caught Jane's gaze in her own, despite the darkness around them. The clatter of bowling pins rattling into the collector caused a rhythmic lull in their conversation, punctuating each statement.

"Maybe you're just not cut out for the claw, Maura, not everyone is," the detective shrugged, her nonchalance in juxtaposition with her tense trapezii muscles. Maura later swore she would have noticed if she hadn't had that third drink.

"But you are! And I want to see you do it, at least," she pleaded.

"Meh. I'm rusty. I haven't done this in at least five years," Jane offered, and she was ready to walk away, until Maura begged one last time, a pout in her flushed face.

"Please?"

There was a beat or two of silence, when the song had switched and the pins were all being changed, and then she acquiesced. "Alright," Jane answered softly, in a tone that only could be heard because of that silence, and then, when she rummaged her jeans for a quarter, the bowling alley roared to life again. She resisted the urge from her nervous system to set her hands to shaking, and she breathed in and out with a roll of the neck before grasping the joystick and watching the game light up.

She moved easily enough toward the Red Sox bear that had eluded her friend for so long, and it traveled quickly along its intended trajectory. Maura turned her attention from the prize to Jane's hands, intent on studying the technique and sure that the bear would be theirs in a few moments.

Then it dropped.

"Shit," said Jane clucking her tongue and turning. "Told ya, I'm rusty." she sighed, pushed her palm through her wild hair, and leaned her head against the glass behind her.

Maura had stood beside her, however, had watched her fingers as they manipulated the controls. She saw that at the last millisecond, the one that required a minute flick of the stick in the direction of the hole, Jane's hand could not complete the task. Most likely from reduced range of movement.

Most likely from the scalpel that had been driven into its palm over five years ago and that had caused intense nerve damage, some of it lasting. It was a range of movement the detective would never get back. "Hey."

Jane opened her eyes and looked toward the source of the voice, only to see the medical examiner nearly flush against her. "Uh, hey yourself…" she managed.

"I'm sorry," Maura began, and when Jane moved to talk over her, she held a finger to those Italian lips. "I didn't realize."

"Hey, I didn't exactly explain, either. My hands are just a little fucked up is all. And they will be for, well, forever. I don't really miss doin' this goofy stuff," the brunette said. She nodded her head toward the claw. " I _am_ sorry I couldn't get you that bear though, real shame."

Maura shook her head both in humor and to keep a sudden crying jag at bay. "You want to know something?"

"What?" asked Jane.

"Your hands are never 'fucked up' when they're on me," Maura stated. When Jane's eyes shot open and she swallowed what looked like a brick in her throat, the other woman elaborated. "You're right. You'll always have a motion impediment, however slight it may be. But your hands are not impaired when they usher me through a crowded room, or when they embrace me after heartbreak, or when they shield me from slipping on the ice…. or when they touch me simply because you like to touch. The message is always clear, always masterful, and always welcome."

The hands in question flexed in indecision.

"Jane?"

"Yeah?"

"That means that you should put them on me now," Maura looked down to her hips, and when scarred palms splayed themselves there, she looked back up into her friend's face.

"Lips too?" Jane asked with a devilish smirk.

"Lips too," Maura confirmed.

"This the booze talkin'?" before she obliged, however, the master interrogator had one last question.

"If it is, make sure you do it again in the morning," her suspect offered, and with that, the deal was sealed, the point proven - some people just weren't cut out for the claw. And that was more than ok.


	2. Dialectology

A/N: This is a one-shot sort of near and dear to my heart.

Also, just a little tidbit: Italian-Americans, especially those whose families have been in the US for a long time, often call their language Italian, even though it is usually Sicilian or Neapolitan or something of the like. So though Jane calls this language variation Italian, it is not representative of the standard Italian one would hear in Italy today. There are a whole host of reasons why, and if you want to talk about them, hit me up!

* * *

As Maura had expected, Dr. Moore's lecture on the Khmu people of Thailand stayed with her long after she and her father left their seats at the BCU amphitheater. She thought about it as she drove the route back home, about his portrait of the phonology of their contrasting dialects, the broad strokes that brought them together, and the minute shades that differentiated them.

His discussion felt familiar to her daughter's ears: immersion as a way of understanding and assimilation as a way of describing. The Khmu tribes were a diverse population and that reflected in their language variation. Eastern speakers played with voicing in their phonemic distinction, something that had drawn her away from it because of its similarity to English. It had been too easy, like the contrast between _craze_ and _graze._ She could relate to it, she could feel it on the tip of her tongue and in the language center of brain, and she wanted something so much farther away than the mother tongue of her father. Her father, the linguist trapped in the shell of anthropologist. He always gravitated toward the whimsicality and music of words, while those traits confounded Maura, and she resisted linguistics as soft science, one she failed to fully grasp in light of her need for equations, absolutes, and clean mathematics.

However, she faked an affinity for the Western variations. For the reliance on the tone and its hills and valleys to make sense of words, it was something the likes of which she had never heard. Her fourteen year old self relished its contrarian position to Arthur Isles and his love for the Eastern, but when she locked herself away, when she left home for school, she discarded language study as nothing more than a sometimes necessity, a grammar to learn to talk to others, to communicate what she needed to others. Linguistics was foreign: from developmental to historical to semantics, it as a discipline represented the antithesis of comfort for her. For someone so good with language itself, she almost laughed at her aversion to its study.

After the requisite gushing over register, syntax, and code-switching, Dr. Moore transitioned into a conversation that had left her raw enough to shrink from the passing streetlights, lest their sallow beams expose the more vulnerable parts of her. He spoke of sociolinguistics as a Western science, not in that no other cultures study dialectology, but in that the study of the intersection of language and social status in industrialized societies was _so_ lacking in these contexts. At the moment, sitting next to Arthur, she felt painfully out of place. Both of them seemed to not belong, he for his objectification of many of the cultures he studied, fitting Dr. Moore's indicting profile perfectly, her for her systematic rejection of an intimate relationship with sociolinguistics.

In more than a few ways, it leveled her with her father, the emotionlessness of it all.

As much as she would like to forget, he was her upbringing. His standard English and erudite pretension was just as much hers, at the end of the day. When she pulled up to her driveway, these revelations accosted her - she looked down to her expensive attire and then up to the light on in the guest house, and she decided to find comfort in the one place she was able since she joined the Medical Examiner's office. The decision itself filled her with melancholy, tempered with a little bit of comfort - if she was indeed her father's daughter, then nothing was more opposite than the Rizzoli that she might find on the other end of that door. Still, it was go to Angela, or face the dark, empty main house.

It took little self-convincing for her to pull out her key to the guest house and turn it in the lock. The light turned out not to be the one in the kitchen, but the one further down the hall, toward the back bedroom that Angela had converted to an office. She liked to read there, to unwind after her day, and Maura found her in it often.

However, on this evening, she heard the matriarch speaking, as though to someone else. Exhaustion colored her pitch and tempered her loudness. Maura stayed just out of sight to allow her some privacy for what seemed to be a frustrating affair. A trying family phone call, perhaps? "I dunno. Your aunt is pretty resolute. She said she just… she just can't deal with Uncle Johnny anymore, or his family. I mean, it's sad, but who couldn't see it comin'? _I Guarnaschelli avianu sempri dinari ma nun era na famigghia filici._ " she fired off in what the doctor assumed to a rapid and rich Italian-American, and she filed the new information about Angela away in her mind for possible use later. It was not a surprising skill, given her heritage and upbringing.

" _Disgrazzia prividuta menu si senti,_ Ma," that voice, the one that spoke those words, however, was _entirely_ unexpected. She would never mistake its melody, its body, its hoarse vowels - it was Jane. Her Jane, her Boston through-and-through, rough and tumble, sworn-to-uphold Jane, her best friend and her most intimate human connection. How then, had she missed the whole other language living inside of her? The thought caused her to stumble forward, purse still in hand, face flushed from embarrassment. "like you always said. If she did see it comin' - Maura?"

"H… hi," Dr. Isles managed, with her gaze never leaving her feet. "The talk got out late but I saw the light in the window…"

"Yeah, yeah, course," said Jane. The switch to English left Maura reeling, wondering if she had imagined those foreign sounds just moments before. Her friend pulled the chair next to her out from the table in the center of the room and patted it.

Angela grabbed their two tea cups from the table and patted the two women on the shoulders, a molecular tiredness evident in her gait. "You two stay, talk. I don't think I could keep my eyes open another minute," she said, and then shuffled out of the room.

"So, I'm gonna guess, by the fact that you're here in the guest house, that it didn't go well," Jane started. She leaned with her elbows on the table littered with various bills and other statements, still in her work clothes. Even her gun and badge remained.

"It… it was fine. Um," Maura said as she shook her head to gather herself and stave off the wave of attraction building in her gut, "why didn't you tell me?" Retroflex sounds, back vowels, so many alveolar consonants, _so many new things her mouth can do_.

"'Bout Aunt Teresa's divorce? You wanna know all that?" Jane asked with a chuckle. "Well, I guess it started with-"

"No," Maura cut her off. She scooted her chair to face her best friend, grabbing each side of her Italian head. She stroked her thumbs under eye sockets, and her fingers scratched lightly at the hairline of the detective's temples.

"No?" asked Jane, eyes closed, pleasure spelled across her features.

"Your dialect. Why don't I know about it?" She suddenly lamented all the years spent with Khmu when she could have been learning _this_ obscure thing of a communication system, could have been learning something that brought her closer to Jane.

"Oh. I dunno. I guess sometimes I even forget. Ma only speaks Italian when she's stressed out about something, and it's usually family drama. Family on her side, that is," the detective said easily, as though the single sexiest thing about her was no big deal and not some clandestine thing that made it even sexier.

Suddenly developmental linguistics was the brightest future Maura could imagine: devoting her life to studying infant language learning in her own Sicilian-speaking, curly-headed Rizzoli child. "I wasn't asking about her; I was talking about you."

"I'm not that great at speaking it, Maura," Jane answered simply and with a heavy exhale. Her friend continued the touches to her face. "I just understand it. I'm slow to get things out. My grand…" she trailed off when she felt Maura's breath on her nose, "… my _nanna_ taught it to me when I was young and Ma just insisted I keep as much of it as possible."

 _God bless Angela Rizzoli with infinite health and wealth for that decision. God bless my future children with whatever it was that trickled forth from Jane's kissable lips_. "I told you tonight that I would be so alone if it weren't for you. You are my family."

"Yeah," said Jane, who resisted nodding in fear of ruining the moment.

It paid off, because Maura kissed her. She kissed her in the way a lock slides into place or the way one inhales after finishing a sprint. Intensely satisfying beyond just the physical action. The doctor tasted wine and her lips tangled seamlessly with Jane's bottom one. They leaned into one another, and when Jane slid her tongue into the mouth on hers, she tasted salt.

She pulled back; tears spotted Maura's face. "Hey, oh hey," she whispered in a gruff register. "What's wrong? That bastard say somethin' to you?" The words were threatening, but the tone was soft.

Maura shook her head. "I want it to be like that. Forever."

"With Arthur?"

"With you," she clarified. "I don't want another family. I don't want anyone else. I'm tired of trying to live up to what I think he would be proud of. I want to live up to what I think _you_ would be proud of."

"Hey," Jane assured her, "you already are. I was proud of you the moment we became friends. You don't need to do something you think I want for that to happen. I want you because you're you. Not my ideal version of you. And in case you haven't noticed, the Rizzolis ain't goin' anywhere," she gestured to the cluttered room where her mother did all her bills.

"I…" Maura gulped, steadying herself, normalizing her voice. "I know. Forgive me for my outburst," she started, and Jane shook her head as if to ward of the apology. "but my God, that Sicilian…" They both chuckled. "I wasn't expecting it, to say the least."

"You like, huh?" asked Jane with a waggle of her eyebrows and a shit-eating grin.

Maura peppered the side of her mouth with short, loud kisses. "I do. I don't want to pressure you, but I heard it, and immediately knew that I want my children to know it. I want you to be the one to teach them."

Jane smiled smiled so wide that her eyes began to close. "You've got it bad."

Maura rolled her eyes. "Up until you said that, I was going to say I'd prefer it if they were your children, too. Now I'm just going to keep my mouth shut."

The detective turned serious for a moment, then she stood. Maura rose with her. Jane took the doctor in her arms, one hand draped on her shoulder, the other on the lowest part of the small of her back. Maura could smell coffee, bar peanuts, and sweat on Jane's neck, and it primed her for what was about to come.

" _Semu propriu cca._ We ain't goin' anywhere, alright? I ain't goin' anywhere. 'Cept back to the main house with you," Jane whispered into her friend's hair. "It's late and I'm beat, but there's no way I'm sleeping on that cot."

Maura reveled in the flame Jane's tongue incited. The intimacy left her shaken - only a very select few had heard this before. It left her vulnerable, but bold. "You're coming with me upstairs."

Jane's eyes widened before she simpered. "If you're ok with that. But at least let me have a decent night's sleep before we start talkin' about those kids of mine."


	3. Opening Day

A/N: Jane and Maura at a batting cage.

* * *

Jane had already taken her hacks at the batting cage this week. She unleashed hell on Fenway Wood Bats' facility late Tuesday night. It had cages outdoors; it was cheap - at least for her; she knew the owner and paid a flat 40 bucks a month for unlimited swings.

Usually, she took a methodical approach, starting with her feet planted and her bat level through the zone, sending balls to the opposite field. She would practice her inside out swing, lay down bunts, go up the middle, always saving the home run swings for last - a reward for her hard work.

On Tuesday, all of her cuts were vicious. She had swung wild, hard; her helmet had spun and sputtered near her feet on more than one occasion. She had given new imagery to the phrase "swing out of your shoes," not that she missed more than those few balls. Marty DiGiovanni, owner and ball boy extraordinaire, had only whistled as he rubbed the stubble on top of his head. His Red Sox hat had made a similar _whoosh_ of disbelief as it bellowed like a flag in his meaty hand, until he had walked away from the diamond and left her to her obviously very personal business.

It was Tuesday night, right after work, and Jane had driven straight to Fenway Wood Bats. It would not have taken a genius to guess her problem, though Korsak and her brother were no slouches, and their guesses were correct: it certainly had _something_ to do with the madman that had taken up a peculiar, deadly obsession with one Detective Jane. Would she admit out loud that he made her feel so impotent that she would do anything to feel powerful again? She hadn't seriously competed in softball since junior college, the games between Homicide and the other departments of the BPD basically akin to a beer league, but she knew what lurked beneath - a devastating home run swing just _begging_ to be let out. She sometimes obliged it, always in controlled sessions and in small spurts. It, however, always sounded so compelling, and Tuesday, she had let it take over, had let it talk her into Fenway on a cold, late March night, wearing nothing on her extremities but cleats, athletic shorts and a Spring Training sweatshirt.

Maura wore the same sweatshirt now, in the same complex, but deep in its bowels, where there were two, older batting cages under the bright, artificial lights. Jane had waved at Marty on the way in, this time during a sunny Saturday mid afternoon and if he wondered what she was doing here for another day this week, or if she was going to destroy the _inside_ of his facility this time, he didn't show it. Characteristically, the lips behind his bushy mustache said nothing, and this allowed her to watch Maura Isles for a few moments, Maura who was unaware of her presence.

The way she swung the bat, fluid, light, all in the hips, categorically contrasted Jane's way. Jane used her legs as grounders - they hot-wired the electricity from her planted feet up through her hips and to her arms until the contact crackled in the air and the ball screamed as it whizzed past the pitching machine. Maura bounced on the balls of her feet now, her short yoga pants and one-of-a-kind cross trainers all about the fluidity of water than the spark of metal on leather. Her stance was wide, her crouch was long and lithe, and the way she twisted her grip against the bat twice before she swung was all a part of a well-oiled machine. When her bat made contact, no less sure than Jane's, it popped with grace - it was the ding of the ball hitting the sweet spot, without Jane's grumbling power, with her own streamlined potency.

In short, Jane adhered to the masculine sports form, beating athleticism into submission through discipline. She took pride in that. But Maura, Maura took pride in departing from it, using her femininity to prove herself just as strong.

"Lookin' good, Maura," Jane called out, and Maura turned her head abruptly to the sound. The detective nodded to the machine with a soft smile, the one that accentuated the lines around her lips. "Follow through is perfect."

Maura demonstrated it again, her arms moving long through the zone as she made contact. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," said Jane. She leaned her front up against the chain link fence between them, threading her fingers in it above her head and stretching. "How's the sweatshirt fit?"

Maura blushed red against her pale skin, her auburn ponytail swishing with her effort to make her swing seem unaffected by the question. The result was a weak foul ball. "Well. It's comfortable."

Jane chuckled. "I'm glad. I leave it at your place?"

"On the couch, yes," said Maura. She sighed and shook out her shoulders, hopping a bit before getting back into her stance.

Jane noted the absence of feral grunts with each hack, reminded herself that there was more than one way to do it. "Mmm."

"How'd you find me?"

"Frankie blabbed. Well, to be fair, he was sitting in the living room with Ma when I got home from my half day, and I sort of grouched it out of him."

"You… you do that often," Maura paused to hit.

"I do," ceded Jane. She watched Maura for several long moments, her hitter's eye scanning her. "What're you doin' here, Maura?"

This made her stop, hold the barrel of the bat in her hands. "Blowing off some steam, Jane."

"You don't take batting practice to blow off steam. You do yoga, you drink tea… you…"

"Meditate?" Maura offered helpfully.

"Yeah. You don't beat the living shit out of softballs," Jane said. Her boot kicked at the fence and she watched it give before making eye contact with her friend.

"To be fair, I don't think that's what I'm doing."

"You're right. But you mind tell me what _is_ going on?"

"Fine," breathed Maura. "This… this makes me feel close to you. I wanted to feel close to you. So I came here, to hit, instead of do yoga, drink tea, or meditate." She sighed a fortifying sigh, and then moved to stand as close to Jane as she could with the metal between them.

Jane scoffed. "I'm with you at the house every night, Maura."

Maura shook her head. "No. you've been watching me. Conducting surveillance. I need you _with_ me."

Jane's brow contorted in equal parts culpability and exhaustion. "I can't stop. You know that. I can't give this guy one inch of leeway."

"Jane? Jane, look at me," Maura pleaded. She turned off the machine, and wrapped her fingers over Jane's, reaching high to find them.

Jane obliged with a wave moisture over her eyes.

"You are not giving him any leeway. You don't have to shut me out to keep him out."

Jane sniffed loudly. "I can't… I can't lose you, Maura. I can't lose you." The statement was sure, of course, but whispered, despite the fact that they were alone. "I can't lose Ma, either, but you? I would-" She didn't get to finish her statement, because Maura's tired lips found her tired lips and they were moving together, through a hole in the fence.

"You have to stop saying that you can't do this. Because you can. I know that you can. I know that there's a place in your head that you go," said Maura, her breath cool against the wetness on Jane's lips. "You disappear sometimes. But you don't have to. Not with me."

Finally, Jane smiled - it was tentative, small, but it showed up nonetheless. "We've never kissed before."

"I say all that and that's your response?"

"Excuse me if it was a little shocking."

"Shocking? You didn't like it?" Maura raised her brow.

"No! No," Jane backtracked, shrugging in her blazer. "I liked it. I wanted it. And I know that you believe in me. I feel it. I just don't know another way to do this, Maura. I'm a cop. Surveillance is what I do. It's what I do best."

"Better than tackling? Or interrogating?" asked Maura. Her simper belied her disbelief.

Jane growled. "Funny." Her eyes followed Maura's body from foot to forehead.

Maura basked in the feeling. She grasped at Jane's sides, and nodded towards the entrance to the cage. With her now so close, they embraced, innocently at first. When Jane kissed Maura again, their hands roamed until they broke apart again. "I can think of a way for you to make me feel safe."

Jane blushed at Maura's wiggling eyebrows. "Oh?" she recovered, "does it involve you, me, and the master bedroom you refuse to let me monitor?"

At that, the tension cleared, at least a little. "Maybe," Maura chuckled, and then a beat passed, and her features turned soft, intimate. "The way you protect me has always been so personal, Jane. Keep it personal."


	4. Fever

A/N: Because I love when Jane is a knucklehead for Maura.

* * *

"Hey, you headed to the body on Hyde Street?" Jane's voiced boomed into the BPD lobby when she saw Maura marching from the elevator to the heavy glass of the front doors.

"Hi," Maura greeted back, still a firm believer in manners despite her friendship with the most boisterous, least-mannered detective in homicide. "No. There was a shootout at a meth lab near the bay today. Martinez has recruited me. I guess they found a body that seems unrelated to that shoot out."

"Ugh, welcome to summer in Boston, huh?" Jane grumbled. She stood close behind Maura as the Chief Medical Examiner exited the building.

Maura felt the angular push of a department-issued firearm just above her behind and nearly swooned. "I will admit that… that tension does seem to run higher when it's hot, yes," was what she managed when they stepped out onto the sidewalk. She couldn't help but settle her gaze on the offending weapon slung on Jane's left hip.

"Who's gonna meet you there? Frankie?" Jane asked, completely unaware and fumbling in her blazer pockets for her Ray-Bans.

"Yes, and Kent should be at your scene already," Maura answered, and shook her head as she watched her friend struggle, half-blinded by the oppressive sun. She braced her left hand on Jane's right side, and used her right to pluck the sunglasses from her belt, just behind that pistol. She waved them in the air and waggled her eyebrows, and Jane blushed.

"What would I do without ya?" the detective wondered aloud with a chuckle on her breath, taking the frames and placing them on her face.

"I can't answer that," Maura replied simply.

"Let's not find out, alright?" said Jane as she set out toward her car with a wave, "Be safe."

"You too, Jane," Maura called out, watching the other woman drive away before climbing into her own car.

* * *

"This ever get less disgusting?" Jane asked of her sergeant before crinkling her nose in disgust. A body, bloated with time and decay, had started to near-cook in the heat of the hoarded home. No air conditioning, no running water.

"The hoard or the gassy dead people?" Korsak chuckled, and his overall cheery step seemed to indicate that if it didn't get less disgusting with time, one at least became impervious to it. "You been in the department ten years, it ain't like you're a newbie."

"Yeah, yeah," Jane waved off his comment with her gloved hand. She looked for the Scottish assistant medical examiner, and saw him conversing with a CSRU member just out of ear shot. "What'd Drake say?"

"Looks like the guy was blown away by a .38 special. Time of death around 4 or 5 days ago; heat accelerated decomposition," he said, looking over his notes. "Pretty basic breaking and entering; there's a busted lock and signs of a struggle. My guess is whoever came here looking' to rob the place thought it was abandoned, got surprised by Mr. Robles here, and there was a tussle."

"Damn, the city goes crazy in August, huh? Blowing' people's heads off for a B and E," Jane commented with a little cynicism in her hoarse voice. She prowled the scene, taking in stacks of mildewed newspapers, broken pottery, what must have been ten years worth of the old guy's trash. That a clear path existed from the front door to the bedroom, where they found him, surprised her. Was it the worst hoard she'd seen since joining the force? By no means, but they were rare enough that the smell of it and the deco burned against her lungs. The ring of her phone was a welcome excuse to take a step outside. She held it up to her boss, he waved her on, and she stepped out the front door to answer. It was Frankie.

"Hey, little brother, what's up?" She answered, shrugging off her blazer, feeling the stick as the satin inside slithered off of her arms.

" _Hey Janie,"_ her brother began on the other line, and there was a tremor in his voice. The smile on her face slipped into something wilder, graver. " _listen, I don't want you to get upset but something happened out here."_

Immediately Maura's face flashed through her mind. "What?" she growled.

" _Guys in the drug unit didn't clear the house, I guess, and while Maura was lookin' at the body in question, some druggie busted out of the cellar and tackled her to the ground."_

"What the fuck?!" Jane shouted, grabbing her keys and sprinting toward her car. "What do you mean they didn't clear the house?! That's their fucking job! Text me your address, god dammit!" she held the phone to her ear as she gunned the engine to life.

" _It's fine, Janie. She's ok. Banged up, but ok. Don't go crazy alright? We're on Sumner,"_ Frankie attempted to reason, but still gave up their location knowing good god damn well that Jane was going to get it - either from him or someone else.

Jane hung up without a response and threw the car into drive.

* * *

"Maura?! Maura!" Jane screamed, and the jagged slam of her cruiser door shook most of the officers clumped around the dilapidated residence. She couldn't care less when she finally spotted the medical examiner seated, very conscious and alive, on the back of a medical response vehicle.

"Jane?" Maura said as her eyebrow curled at the sight of her best friend barreling toward her. She winced as the EMT finished bandaging the abrasion on her neck. "Why aren't you out in Revere?"

The detective's body coiled, and her mouth snarled. Her gaze focused squarely on the reddish-purple swelling around Maura's left eye. She stared the EMT away from them, sat next to the medical examiner, and entered her personal space. They shared a compound of breaths, Jane's livid and Maura's a combination of aroused and exhausted. "You alright?" the question came out as little more than a puff of volatile air.

Maura placed scratched hands on Jane's shoulders. "I'm fine. He caught me off guard, is all. I was on the ground before I even realized what was happening," she explained. She felt the energy building under her fingertips, rippling under Jane's skin. "Hey. Jane? Jane, I'm ok. I am ok." she repeated, eyes latching onto her friend's in one last desperate attempt to calm her.

No such luck could be had.

"He here?" Jane asked, standing.

"I'm sorry?" the brusqueness, the abruptness of the motion, caught Maura off guard.

"He here? Or they take him to the station?"

"He's here, Jane. They got him cuffed at detained in one of the bedrooms until Maura's done in the ambulance. He's pretty messed up. They're gonna take him to the hospital, I guess," Frankie's voice cut in from behind them. Jane spun on her heels and bored into him with a glare.

"Where were you?" She asked, eerily quiet. "Huh? Where was your ass when she was gettin' pummeled by a drug addict?"

Frankie gulped. "I was across the property, Janie, c'mon. Doing my job." he reasoned.

She heard none of it. "Wrong answer. Make yourself scarce for a while, do yourself a favor." She marched past him and jogged up onto the porch steps when she felt him grab for her.

"Jane, don't! Don't do it!"

Detective Jane Rizzoli ignored her brother's calls and shoved through the open front door, where Martinez and some others conversed in a huddle. She stomped past them, down a hall, and stopped when she saw a uniformed officer standing watch over a closed bedroom door.

"Detective," he greeted, tipping his hat to her.

She cocked her shoulders back, adjusted the holster on her belt. "Reynolds. This the one? He in there?" She asked, calmly enough, despite her bared teeth and curled upper lip.

"Yeah. Real knucklehead. EMT's in there lookin' him over now," Reynolds answered. He was no fool - he knew exactly what Jane sought. He stepped further away from the door.

"Good," she said. She hiked her leg up and back, and kicked a heeled boot straight through the frail wood.

With a cacophonous _schwack!,_ the door flew into the wall and hummed with energy. The EMT bandaging the meth addict nearly shit his pants when Jane appeared on the other side of the obliterated door. The meth addict's eyes exploded at the sight of the destroyer of the door coming straight for him. He attempted to crawl behind an old bookshelf.

Jane's foot caught his face instead. "You in a good enough frame of mind to run now, motherfucker?" She asked in a grunt. The emergency med tech rose to try and come between them, but she shot him a feral look. "Get the fuck out of this room. I'm interrogating this suspect."

Needless to say, he ran out. The suspect attempted to follow, but Jane grabbed his collar and used his momentum to thrust him into the wall.

"Jane! Jane what the hell are you doin'?" Frankie had apparently run into the house when he heard the commotion, but couldn't wrap his arms around his sister until she had pulled the man up and head butted him. He fell to the floor, seemingly unconscious.

"You try and touch her again, and I promise this motherfucker won't be here to stop me from beating the shit out of you," she spit at the limp body on the floor, and she struggled as her brother dragged her out of the room. Frankie rolled his eyes, and shook his head severely as Martinez attempted an approach.

* * *

"Listen to me," said Maura. She had been speaking for the last two minutes as she assembled sutures and antiseptic, but Jane had looked everywhere but her face. Jane sat on a stool near Maura's work desk in the autopsy suite, and Dr. Isles pulled up next to her with a look of admonishment.

"I know what you're gonna say," Jane mumbled, trying to visualize the gash on her forehead.

"Oh? And what am I going to say, Detective?" Maura smirked. She pulled an alcohol wipe from its package and dabbed at her friend's heinous amalgam of clotted blood and ruptured skin.

Jane fought a wince. "You're gonna say that I shouldn't have done what I did. That I should have taken the help from the EMT and gotten stitched at the scene and blah, blah, blah I don't need to be headbutting suspects."

"See, what they say about assumptions is true," Maura commented, blowing on the area. It wasn't necessarily sanitary thing to do, but she knew it comforted Jane. God knew she had plenty of stitch-ups to learn how her friend did and did not like to be nurtured. "It's selfish, but I'm glad you did it. You know how I feel about you going rogue for me," she winked. Jane turned pink. "What I was going to say was that I wish you would be more careful with yourself. Just because you're protecting me by busting people's heads in doesn't mean you need to bust your own."

"Yeah, you're right," Jane grumbled.

"I'm sorry, say that again?" Maura said cheekily, and her friend growled. "Just kidding. Hold still."

"You want to go get a drink after this?" detective Rizzoli asked. She would have hung her head if she needn't hold it up for Maura to stitch.

"Like at The Robber?"

"Nah. Like somewhere quiet where we don't know people who will point and laugh at my forehead all night."

"That sounds… great, actually. And then we can go home, where I can… repay you for your chivalry," Maura teased.

"Very funny, Maura. Very funny." Jane shot back as she rolled her eyes, but there was nowhere to hide her dilated pupils and quickened breath.


	5. Til Death Do Us Part

A/N: As an October baby, sometimes I long for the falltime. This ficlet was born out of that and a prompt on tumblr - "things you said under the stars and in the grass."

* * *

Jane looked so dark on the evening of November the 2nd.

The sun had long set, and the air's chill caused her to tug her jacket tighter against her body, hands fisted deep in pockets. The sound of her oxford shoes against the dirt below was the lovechild of a crunch and a hiss, no doubt because of the way she stood straddling the line between grass and tree. She spread her legs wide and she kept her hands close to her pelvis; a telltale sign of her comfort, the ease of her movement in this particular space. It was a sign of the physical dominance the made her handsome, her dominance combined with the way starlight filtered through the leaves above her head and glinted against her skin.

The light did not, however, illuminate her. Rather, it thrust shadows upon her, caught just enough of the reflection in her brown eyes to be haunting - the angles of her face jutted out against the hood created by her wavy, wild hair that fell past her shoulders. She smirked a smirk that said she owned this part of the night, that she owned this land and everything around it, stretching out for miles.

Maura, holding a giant orange that served as the superlative pop of color to her mild salmon sweater, nearly choked with the desire to have all her lightness swallowed up in the Jane standing inches away, who had just handed her the citrus she now cradled in both palms. She wanted to scream, she wanted to sob, she wanted to shout her needs from the height of the tree that towered above them, but she didn't think that her shaky legs could support her if she tried to climb. So, she settled for speaking. Whispering. "Say it again," she breathed, a request so light and soft in her feminine voice.

It commanded Jane's masculine energy with ease. " _un_ _murticeddu,_ " she replied, smirking.

"And what does it mean?" Maura asked, looking to the orange in her hand, and then up to Jane's full, wet lips.

"Means a present, for _U iornu di morti,"_ said Jane. Maura had no response; she was too busy watching the foreign vowels tumble out of Jane's mouth and writhe into the air. She gulped when they hit her ears and turned them red, even when the breeze blew cold against her hair. "But, uh, I don't know, is that cheesy? I haven't done this in awhile, Actually, I've never given anyone a _murticeddu_. They've only been given to me."

Maura held her finger against those lips she had been watching. Raptly. "I'm sorry. I was caught off guard by it," she said, and just as Jane took the darkness of the evening into her and made it her own, Maura took the light. Pockets of candle flame and torches flickered from people still visiting graveyards and tombstones in the town below the hill they occupied, little pulses of paint against ink, little accents of color for Maura's aura, her spiritual ensemble. They complemented her bright smile and the fairness of her green irises.

A smile and eyes that Jane knew more than saw in the orchard, the two of them alone at night and far from any light source. "It's not a bottle of perfume, or a fancy bag, but-"

Maura dropped one hand from the fruit and stepped closer, blades of grass tickling her ankles and giving her a nervous shiver. She put that hand on Jane's heart to steady herself. "It makes me feel close to you. Close to your family," she said with a nod toward a distant main house, barely visible from the dirt rode several yards away. Jane curled her lips in affirmation, knocked her forehead against Maura's and closed her eyes. Maura felt something heavy searching out her something light, and she wanted it on top of her, all over her.

Jane spread her arms, welcoming Maura in, wrapping them together with her hands still in her pockets. After a few minutes of listening to nothing but the sound of insects and the occasional shuffle of their feet, she spoke. "Not anything like Boston in November, is it?" Maura shook her head against the chest at her cheek.

Indeed, Sicily was nothing like Boston in November. The days were cool, but still Mediterranean. The nights were cold, but never frigid. "Nothing at all. I'm glad we came."

The Marconi family, Jane's maternal relatives, owned the ground that they stood on now - it had been nearly a decade since Jane had traveled with her mother and brothers to her uncle's winter home on the citrus farm, and Maura was an unquestioned, inevitable guest for her first vacation back to their homeland. This was because Maura was the unquestioned, inevitable guest knocking around all the chambers of her heart - and her family must have recognized it with the way they drew her in, tangoed with her in intimacy, fought for her attention and gifted her with loyalty.

The orange had been a last minute thought during the holiday that secretly was Jane's favorite - something she picked from the branches above them on the late night stroll that had become their routine on this trip to the island. "I'm glad too. Perfect timing. I really like the day of the dead."

"Really? Why is that? We never celebrate it stateside," asked Maura, letting herself be embraced by the rattle of words in Jane's midsection.

"Well, first it was because we got gifts," Jane said through a smile, and Maura pinched her good naturedly. "Ow! I'd like to point out you got a gift, too, you know," she said of the orange in Maura's coat pocket before moving on, "And more recently, as an adult, it makes me feel close to my grandparents. To Frost."

Maura remembered the celebration the Marconis and Rizzolis had introduced her to earlier that day. Jane had marched into the church like sin and trouble in her leather jacket and rolled-cuff trousers, but no one recited the mass for the dead as fervently as her. They had held hands when the eucharist was over and it made Maura feel a rush of guilt and invincibility that resembled floating between two worlds - briefly she wondered if Jane was taking her somewhere, a plane she hadn't visited before. "I enjoyed today. I think I felt what you're describing; when we touch I feel what you're feeling. I see what you're seeing, even if I don't necessarily-"

She was stopped by Jane nuzzling her forehead with her nose. It was insistent enough that Maura looked up, surprised when their lips touched and Jane kissed her like she needed to take the rest of Maura's life from her. " _Spusa cu me._ "

Maura's pupils ballooned and darkened, her eyes grew glossy like she had taken some of Jane instead. "What did you just say?"

Jane was only a few millimeters away; her blush caught flame in the air they shared and spread to Maura's face. She faltered, her raspy voice a shaky wave in the moonlight. "Maybe this is the wrong time to ask, the wrong place. I didn't plan-"

"Say it again," Maura whispered, desperate, shaking her head to all of Jane's insecurity.

"What?" Jane threw out on an exhale.

"Say it again," reiterated Maura. "I know what you're asking. Ask me again. I'll say yes."

In a few beats, dark Jane returned with a wicked simper, and got down on one knee in the Sicilian dirt.


End file.
